


Cut and Run

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Tales from the Shelterverse [6]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Animal Deaths, Gen, baby assassins, fathers and daughters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeryn takes a first step into a wider world, so to speak.  As she’s a Hawke, that first step is a doozy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cut and Run

Aeryn followed Bethany home, trying very hard not to think about what had just happened.

She’d have to tell Father. 

Glancing up at the woods around them, the trees on the edge of the forest were tall and slender, the green in a hundred shades that all changed like a bit of witchglass as the sun moved across the sky.  This little house on the edge of the Brecillian Forest had been Aeryn’s favorite place yet.  Quiet and lonely, Mother said.

He’d probably decide they’d have to leave. It was her fault for not keeping a better eye out on Beth, for straying too far up the bank fishing while Bethany was left on her own.

It was her fault.  If she hadn’t turned her back, there wouldn’t have been anything for the Templar to see.  They’d have just been two little girls, playing near the river.

Bethany skipped into the house.  “Mama! Mama, look at all the fish we caught!”

“I wanna see the fish!  You better not have caught that big trout, Papa promised he’d show me where it sleeps!”  Carver’s voice, hoarse with the cough that had kept him home, came with a fretful whine at the end.  He hated being left behind.

“We caught all the fish!” 

“No you didn’t!”

Mother looked out of the door, to find her eldest child hesitating on the broad bit of red sandstone Malcolm had laid as the front step when they were making the little abandoned house livable.  She smiled her warmest smile at the stringer Aeryn had fashioned from multi-stemmed branch.  “Oh, that’s a nice catch.”

Aeryn couldn’t seem to make herself go into Mother’s clean, fresh house.   She felt filthy, all of a sudden.  The slime from the fish stank on her hands and there were flecks of blood on her bare feet from their slit bellies, where she’d gutted them by the river.  “I’ll…I’ll go scale them by the wood shed.”

“That’s fine.  I’ll have Bethany grate that stale loaf and we’ll fry them up.  You didn’t happen to pick any cress while you were on the river, did you?”  She’d turned to go back to her sewing, but Leandra stopped and brushed a straying dark red lock from Aeryn’s forehead with smooth fingers and narrowed her eyes.  “You look a little pale, darling.  You haven’t caught Carver’s cold, have you?”

“No, no I don’t think so.  It’s just hot, today.” 

“Well, alright.  Get cleaned up and come inside out of the sun.  Your father should be home this evening and you know how he loves trout.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Aeryn turned away, feeling her mother’s sharp blue eyes on her back.  She was being too quiet, she’d have to liven up or Mother would know something had happened. 

She pumped water into the trough and scrubbed her hands, using one of the rags by the pump to clean her feet.  She could still smell blood, though, so she washed again, scrubbing around her nails until one cuticle tore. 

She bit the tiny flap of skin off.

One of the fish gave a limp twitch, moving the whole branch and she stared at its glaring gold eye, starting to glaze over.   The Templar had glassy blue eyes as he’d gazed up, pale like watery jewels.  He’d gasped and his fingers had reached….

“Pup!  Mama says you caught the whole river!”

Aeryn jerked around, the dull butter knife she’d been scaling the fish with up defensively in front of her and Malcolm gave a heart chuckle.  “Good reflexes!  But save it for…” His eyes are sharper than Leandra’s or simply less preoccupied with a sick seven year old.  “What’s happened, then?”

“Someone saw Bethany, Papa.”  She couldn’t look him in the eye.  She’d been told a hundred times not to turn her back on Bethany, even if no one is around. “A Templar.”

“Saw her casting sparks?”  Aeryn nodded.

“Where?”  He’d opened the small cupboard in the wood shed to draw out the staff he kept hidden there.  It was the wicked looking one, with a spiked blade on the end.  The one he never brought into their houses, never let them touch to feel the way mana hummed down it, making vibrate like a lute string.

“On the river.  It’s okay, though.  I fixed it.  I’m _sorry_ I wasn’t watching, Papa.  I just….Mama wanted cress and I thought I saw some and she was making plates out of acorns and she was just playing….”

He set his fingers on her lips, stopping her breathless explanation.  “It’s alright, Aeryn.  I’ll…”  What she’d said had caught up with him, then.  “What do you mean you fixed it?”

“He didn’t see me.  I got up on the bank behind him.  He wasn’t wearing his helmet.”

His fingers clutched her narrow shoulders, “Pup?  What did you do?”

“I _fixed_ it, Papa.  It was my mistake and I fixed it. I’m sorry, I won’t ever not watch again.  I promise…Do we have to leave?”

“Aeryn…stop and tell me exactly what happened.”  He was grim suddenly, lines around his eyes and his mouth, half hidden in soft black beard, turning him sharply older.

“I went around…you know where the banks are really high and that one is eaten out, like a cliff?  And…and I hid in shadows.  I know I’m not supposed to, but…”

“Go on.”

“I got behind him.  I had my fillet knife, it’s really sharp.” 

She couldn’t hear herself, but her sweet voice got a little dreamy as Malcolm listened.  “It was just like where you showed me on that hog we killed last autumn.  I could see the little pulse, his artery was really close to the surface and he was all excited, looking at Bethany.  His hands were shaking.  I think I jumped….I don’t remember….but it wasn’t as hard as the hog.  He had skin like a rabbit, the knife went right in.  I think I got his airway too, there was a sucking sound and he…didn’t scream.  I thought he’d scream.  But Bethany didn’t hear, even.”  She hadn’t taken her eyes off of Malcolm’s but the glimpse of pride in her face, that Bethany didn’t hear it, shocked him enough that he let it show and she faltered.

“Didn’t I do right?  Did I do something wrong?”

Looking back, Aeryn would remember the way Malcolm’s whole body had crumpled, his shoulders jerking in, his head bowing for just a tiny moment.  Her impossibly tall, strong father had looked like his world had caved in.  Of course she’d done wrong. 

“But I had to, Papa.  He’d have hurt Beth.  He’d have taken her!”

  
And in her nightmares the Templar’s eyes blinked blindly at her again, the blood on her skin would burn with implication and the words of the Chant would echo as they damned her to the Void.

“I know…but, child…” fingers in her hair, horror on his face.  “Never mind.   There is work to do.  Did you…” 

But mother’s voice was in her nightmares, too, ragged and raw and begging.  “ _Don’t let them, Malcolm…please don’t let them take my baby…_ ”

HIs child was a murderer, only interested in whether or not she’d done it right.  She’d remember the way the light had gone out of him. 

  
He swallowed, once, twice.  “What did you do with the body?” 

  
“I…I covered it with bracken, there under the cliff.  And…” she pulled a little calfskin bag off of her belt loop.  “I took some things…his coin and a loose stone on his blade.  Like a robbery.  Like you said you did that time that hunter had you and Mother cornered in Cumberland.”

He stared at her and she asked again, “Didn’t I do it right?  I’m so sorry I left her, Papa.  I won’t ever, not _ever_ again.” 

Slowly, he nodded, his hand white-knuckled on the staff, but he took the bag dangling from Aeryn’s small hand, blood streaking down her white fingers from the torn cuticle.  “Yes.  Yes, pup.  You did just right.  We…we aren’t going to tell your mother, though, hmm?”

“Oh.   Alright, Papa.”

“We do need to leave.  Don’t say anything to your mother.  I’ll…I’ll think of something.  _Maker_ …”

 


End file.
